Two Years and a Blink of an Eye

Wow... Jenna is two. How did that happen? Wasn't it only yesterday that the Doctor was handing me this VERY red faced little taco, all wrapped up in those delightful hospital blankets that you know have housed hundreds of naked babies before swaddling yours? In the blink of an eye my red faced little baby has turned into a beautiful, smart, caring, stubborn, independent, thoughtful, hysterical little girl. Josh and I feel like the luckiest people in the world because we get to come along for the ride.

I'll post more stories and pictures later, but for now... in the past two years, my little angel has gone from this...

To the crazy little girl who jumps up on my lap for a kiss (at Ocean City last weekend)

At 2 years old, Jenna is...

Conversational -- knows what everything is, when and how to use it, and talks in sentences. She knows things that I don't know she knows, and she never fails to surprise me.

Independent -- EVERYTHING is "Jenna helping" or "Jenna do it" and if mommy or daddy try to help, she gets very upset. Until she realizes she absolutely can't do something on her own, then she'll say "Mommy helping?" Her latest is the stroller... she won't ride in it, but she insists on pushing it. She can't reach high enough so she can't do a great job. Finally she'll bend over and push it from the basket on the bottom when she gets too frustrated trying to push from the handle.

Stubborn -- I can no longer decide what she wears in the morning. She wears what she wants, when she wants, and there is no accounting for matching.
Obsessed with Elmo and Elmo clothing.

Loves to Sing/be sung to.

Can count to 10, but not very well. It's usually 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9. She knows all the numbers and will answer correctly if you ask her what comes next, but sometimes when she's left to do it herself from start to finish, she loses a few along the way. Same with the ABC's.

Loves to jump, especially on the bed. Any bed.

Loves "special treats."

LOVES her grandparents.

Loves talking on the phone. She picks it up and says, in a sing song voice, "Hell-ohh? How are you? I'm fine. How are you?" (all without waiting for a response. She can carry on a full conversation by herself)

Loves to sleep late. If I didn't wake her for daycare, she'd sleep in every morning.

Loves pasta and bread, not meat or chicken. To compel her to eat meat, we have to pretend it's "gum" (her favorite outlawed treat. She sees it in my purse and tries to steal it every chance she gets).

Loves the color pink. She loves popsicles and will frequently open the freezer to ask for them, but she will ONLY eat pink popsicles.

HATES not getting her way, and will not give in. Ever. She has become a big fan of the "throw herself on the floor and pound her fists on the ground" temper tantrum. I hear she gets that from me, but I refuse to believe it.

Loves Tali and Lennon. She loves all her friends, but these are her two closest friends with whom she has a very special relationship. It doesn't hurt that they have pretty cool parents, too.

Loves giving kisses.

Hates when Mommy is sad (and I use this to my advantage, if she doesn't want to cuddle, I give a pouty face and say "mommy sad!" and she runs over and climbs in my lap and gives hugs and kisses till mommy is happy. Josh has tried this. It doesn't work for Daddy).

Have I mentioned she loves elmo? Mr. Noodle, too. I think Josh and I just like hearing her say "Mister Noodle" cause it's really cute.

She is just such a sweet, smart, fun little girl, and I am so excited to watch her continue to grow. It's hard to believe she starts pre-school in a few days. But I know it won't be long until I'm sending her off to big-kid school, so I try to cherish every single second. At the beach this weekend, the waves were really rough from a far-away hurricane, and Jenna was terrified of the water. She would come down to the Ocean with us, and then cling to my legs for dear life... venture out a few feet, then run back and grab on to mommy for safety. Eventually she let us take her in a little bit. BUT while we were down at the water playing with her, I noticed this older guy looking at us -- paying more attention that I thought was normal. When he caught me noticing he shook his head and said "enjoy it now... that's my 17 year old up there, and I would have sworn it was just yesterday that I was showing him the ocean for the first time. It goes by faster than you can imagine." He sounded wistful, and it made me realize that, as fast as life goes, I don't want to take a single second of it for granted. Here are a few pictures of Jenna enjoying (or not enjoying) the beach. One thing she does love? the Pool. This kid would have spent the entire 4 days at the pool, without interruption!!

clinging to mommy, afraid to go near the scary hurricane-strength waves.

Breaking out and trying to get to the pool...

Doing the same thing, in the same place, last year. Just 2 days before her 1st birthday....

OK, I'm off to the pool, I'll see you later, everyone!!

With pre-school looming...

Jenna decided to get up to date on her current events.




Unfortunately she won't sing with the camera on, but she really does know the whole "ABC" song, even if she doesn't know what the letters are in real life.

Pineapple

I can say "pineapple" like a big girl, now... Which is why my mommy is so glad she caught me on tape the way I used to say it when I was just a little girl... you know, 3 weeks ago!

Here I am last month, hanging out with grandpa before school... Sorry if I seem a little out of it, I was still tired, it was really early!!

Swimming and Swinging

I swear, if Jenna could only go in the swimming pool and on the swing set for the rest of her life, I'm pretty sure she'd be the happiest girl around.

Today we went to the pool with Casey and Parker (and their parents). We started in the baby pool, but eventually the grown ups gave in and took us into the big pool. We had a blast!! I LOVED jumping off the edge into mommy and daddy's arms!!!




Mommy kept throwing me up in the air, I was having a ball!!

Guys and their dolls... walking back to the Dowling's house on our daddy's shoulders!

After my bath, mommy came in to find me and daddy enjoying some laughs. (I totally just realized that I put the title in the middle of this video clip by accident. Sorry 'bout that!!)

No More Monkeys!

Just before Jenna went to bed tonight (yes, I know, she doesn't look at all tired, but she was!) we went outside to let the doggy out and run around. Jenna found a shovel belonging to our neighbors grandson, and was having a ball. She had zero desire to sit and listen to me bark orders at her, which of course is exactly what I tried to do.

Maybe one day I'll catch her on camera when SHE'S in the mood to sing, and then you'll actually be able to hear and understand her. But for now, here she is half-obliging me and half-ignoring me while playing with the shovel. Unfortunately you can't really hear her say anything too clearly, but I'm not posting this to show off her skills, just how cute she is while doing them :-)

(ignore the talking in the background, my dad was talking on his cell phone outside. Oh, also ignore my obnoxious singing in the first video!)

By the way, in case you were curious what Jenna was playing with, just ask her!

Father's day

(If you don't like reading boring family updates, scroll down to a few photos!)

I hope you had a nice Fathers' Day Weekend!! We definitely had a very relaxing weekend... well, I should say I had a very relaxing weekend, because I basically slept. The entire weekend. If you know me, you know that's not typical of me, however I hadn't slept at all during the previous 96 hours, so sleep was definitely on the agenda. In a bit of a reverse mothers/fathers day, Josh surprised me by booking the massage he had given me a gift certificate for on mother's day, so I spent a wonderful hour at the spa on Saturday morning while he stayed home with a still-recovering Jenna. How's that for a wonderful father!?!

Speaking of "still-recovering..." that's another story. Jenna survived her first (and hopefully last) bout of the "hand foot and mouth" virus. I suppose it gets that name because it can lead to a rash on the hands and feet, neither of which Jenna had, but she did have a very high fever, and blisters in the back of her throat (so says the doctors office, they were never visible to us). Basically, she could not/would not eat OR drink anything from Tuesday morning through Friday night. Saturday was a bit better, and by Sunday she was fine. We are very fortunate to have wonderful parents in town who could watch her during the day, but the poor little boo was completely miserable that it was tough to think about anything else all week. She would try to drink something, then grab her mouth screaming and crying, clearly in pain from having ANY liquid in her throat. She stayed up all night long just screaming and wanting to be with us in our bed (and if you know Jenna, you know how miserable she really must have been, because in her 22 months, she has never slept a single night in our bed, by her own choice, until last week). She also developed a particular affinity for "mommy!!" everything had to be "mommy!!!" but that seems to have passed now that she's feeling better. It is definitely heartbreaking to see your little baby in so much pain... I suppose this is true no matter how big they get!

Jenna did have one upside from her illness, however... on Friday afternoon I stopped at the grocery store to pick up ANY liquid I thought she might possibly drink, because we were so worried about dehydration. This included chocolate milk, and fruit juice by some manufacturer that brilliantly licensed the rights to elmo... I'm sure whatever it cost in licensing fees has been more than made up in sales, because I can't imagine there is a single toddler who will walk down the juice aisle and not demand "Elmo juice!!!" If there is such a toddler, it certainly isn't mine!! She wasn't very interested when she was still sick, but on saturday she took a liking, and by Sunday all I heard was "chocolate milk!!!" this morning, she would not eat breakfast, she would not drink milk, nothing... all she wanted was "Elmo juice!!!" Oh well, at least she's healthy and hydrated! I'll worry about sugar dependency later!

I have so much updating to do about what a character little Jenna has become... for now, it's late, so I'll leave you with a few quick pictures from this weekend. Not the most flattering of her, but I just had to include this picture to show what a hysterical, amazing time she had swimming with her daddy on Fathers' Day. Is this a daddy's girl, or what!?!?

(must click on this picture to see the sheer joy in Jenna's face!!)

I also have a video of them swimming together... basically Josh would push the raft away, and Jenna would yell "bye bye!" then Josh would rush towards her, and she would crack up hysterically, and demand "more," so this continued over and over again until Jenna was literally turning blue and shaking from the cold (it's not easy to be out of the water on a raft unless it's super hot out, which it wasnt). Even despite her obvious chill, Jenna was FURIOUS when we took her out of the pool. When we got home from daycare tonight, she immediately found her yellow floaties, put them on each arm, and demanded "swimming pool!!" Someone likes the water!!

Here is a pathetic attempt at a family picture from Fathers' day... unfortunately I look pale and zombie-like (I really thought I had caught up on sleep by then!) and Jenna is eating and not looking at the camera. BUT, it's father's day, and Josh looks good, so that's all that matters.

Here is a random picture of Jenna and flurry on Saturday, that I'm posting because Josh got a kick out of it. Jenna is obsessed with flurry, as I've mentioned before. Here, flurry had jumped into my chair after dinner, hoping to score some leftovers. As soon as she got up there, Jenna immediately jumped into the chair to join her, and proceeded to hug her until Flurry gave up and jumped down. Ignoring Flurry's scary eyes, and the chocolate all over Jenna's face, it's hard not to look at this picture and see a little girl playing with her dog... where did my baby go, and who is this child that took her place?! she's so grown up!!

On that note... Jenna is increasingly hysterical lately. She has a full vocabulary and randomly busts out with the most amusing words/sentences/requests. I guess a lot of the kids in her daycare class are starting to turn 2, because out of nowhere, Jenna has come home lately saying "happy birthday to you!" it's really cute and totally stunted... if I can make it come across in a blog, it sounds like "HAPP-y BIR-day... to you" (emphasis on the happy birthday, with the "to you" as an afterthought). She says it over and over, like she's trying to sing it.

She can also sing "No more monkey's jumping on the bed." Well, just that line of the song, but it's still the longest sentence we've heard her say. What's even funnier though, is when that song comes on, even if she's not really listening or paying attention... it's completely instinctual... when the lyrics get to "one fell off and bumped his head" she immediately starts hitting her hand to her head. Then when it goes "Momma called the doctor and the doctor said..." she starts wagging her finger like she's saying "no no no." If she's paying attention, thats' where she'll also say "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" She also knows the beginning of "twinkle twinkle little star" and the ABC's. I think she watches too many nursery rhyme shows at home.

Among her other random habits lately... I think I must work from home too much, because any time Jenna sees a stack of papers, or books (even if it's my law school books on my book shelf) she points to them and says "Mommy work!" What else? let's see... she's fond of demanding "piggy back" rides (which sound like "pibby back", and its' too cute not to give in whenever she asks... and with 55 stairs separating our rooms from the bottom floor of my dad's house, I can't say I blame her for wanting a ride!). She's also gotten very demanding lately... if she sees a book, it's "book! mommy read it!" and if daddy's tries to read it... temper tantrum (or vice versa). Basically, because she can now identify what she wants, and how she wants it to happen, she completely flips out if she does not get her way, 100%

Oh, I suppose because for the last 22 months of her life, we've been pointing to pictures of things and saying "what's that?" "whose that?" she now likes to run to the line of pictures in my dad's stairwell and point to a particular family picture of me, my brother, and my parents from my dad's 50th birthday, and point to everyone... while pointing, she yells at you, "whose that?" she doesn't actually want you to answer, she wants to answer herself, but she has to do the asking... once she asks, you then ask "who is that?" and she'll tell you... Unca Geg, Gandpa, Mommy... she recently learned who Grandma is, although half the time she says "Gandma" and half the time she says "Di-yann" Then if you ask her her middle name, she'll say "Di-yann" again. No idea if she knows it's really her middle name, but we're getting closer to an understanding. It's still cool to see her recognize and acknowledge my mom!

Oh, one last thing thats' really amusing, and I'll have to figure out how to upload from Josh's iphone... Josh does these workouts at home, and the other day, Jenna and I came upstairs as he was finishing up his push ups. Jenna had never seen push ups before, and was clearly quite amused by them. When he finished, she got down on the ground and started doing her own push ups. Then she went downstairs and demanded grandpa do some push ups. Now, when you ask, she'll literally drop and give you 20!! Josh's dad got her on video briefly last night... I'm trying to pull this from the iphone, but I don't know if it'll work. If it does, this doesn't even show how she normally does it, because she was outside on a deck, and in a dress, etc, but she normally gets down on the ground and does her "push ups." It's still pretty cute!

Clap on, Clap off... the Jenna.

Just a little clip of Jenna being silly a month or so ago, right after we moved into my dad's, and the novelty of being in a new place, with new light switches, hadn't worn off yet. Sorry she seems a bit distorted, I filmed the clip with the camera held vertically, but when it uploads to the computer it only uploads sideways, so I had to flip it digitally and it doesn't convert very well. Even distorted, she's still cute :-)